The clock is ticking down to Friday night’s deadline for Google, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers to submit to a federal court a new version of their digital book settlement.

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The new version is aimed at appeasing the Justice Department and hundredsofothers, who have raised concerns about how the settlement may violate antitrust laws. While authors, publishers and Google-watchers wait, one of those parties has issued as little bit of a tease — or some preemptive public relations.

The Authors Guild, which previously sued Google over digital books before settling with the company in October 2008, posted to its Web site Friday afternoon saying the groups would file an amended settlement Friday, although the version isn’t “quite out of the oven yet.”

The post, entitled “Happy Amended Settlement Day,” added that the settlement is “holding to our core principles: lots of access to out-of-print books for readers, students and scholars; compensation and control for authors and publishers.” The original settlement gave Google permission to use the digital books it scanned off library shelves in its search service, sell subscriptions of digital works to libraries and sell some works to individuals. In exchange, Google agreed to share revenue it earned from selling access to books back with the authors and publishers who owned the copyrights to the books.

The Authors Guild post also linked to editorials that contained some praise for the original settlement. “We’re confident they’ll all find even more reasons to cheer the amended settlement,” it said.

The parties moved to amend the settlement in September, after the Justice Department told the court charged with approving the agreement that the original settlement was too “open-ended” and there was “significant potential” that it violated antitrust laws.